***Anther’s POV***

Anther’s feet slowly started to move again. Before he started to think about scary things, mother was relying on him to bring meat for Rybo’s pie.

The boy’s pace steadily increased until he was sprinting back to the village. He rushed right past the guild workers, something that surprised them, considering his past behavior, and beelined for Anniil’s house.

“I got some rabbits for you, mother!” he fished them out of his sack and set them on the table. “I have to go look at something, so I’ll be back later!”

Meanwhile, Anniil was fishing around in a cupboard, looking for a certain spice she worried she was out of. She wasn’t concerned at all about Anther going to “look at something.” He did stuff like that all the time, and she figured he just wanted to see the guild workers build something interesting. “Alright, sweetie. Thanks for being so quick.”

When Anniil finally found what she was looking for, Anther was already gone. She glanced at the table where he’d left the rabbits and frowned slightly, picking one up to examine it.

“Where did he find rabbits this color?” She muttered.

Anther sprinted past the builders a second time. Several of them furrowed their brows in confusion or disappointment, but they soon paid it no mind, returning to work.

Anther had seen something. He was sure he had seen something, but he also wasn’t sure. Now that he wasn’t under a time limit, he had to check whether his memory was playing tricks on him. He had been in such a hurry to get those rabbits, how could he have been paying attention to details?

When Anther returned to the dungeon entrance, he was panting heavily. The change in mana density hit him hard, and he was already short of breath. Before he knew it, he was opening his eyes to see the tree canopy, with no memory of ever closing them.

The boy sat up and rubbed his head. He looked at patches of the sky, but the sun hadn’t moved. He hadn’t been out for long. Without paying it much mind, the elf stood up and dusted himself off, then approached the first puzzle door. It was locked this time. He opened it from memory and peered inside, but the wooden person was gone and so were its tools. Anther took a deep breath and stepped inside. He looked at the wall first. There were carvings of a demon girl, who looked similar to Cherise, in various painful states. Above, the words ‘Die, Rapist’ were carved. He looked behind him next and, for a moment, his heart caught in his chest. There was no mistaking the statue for anyone other than Cherise, though he calmed down a bit on realizing it was indeed just a statue. The statue’s head was lying in a fern beside it, and the same message as before was carved into its chest.

Cherise’s words flashed through his memory. “I did something bad… I got a little violent… It was docile… Normally they fight back more.” Her smile was so clear in his memory, “I believe we came to an understanding.”

Anther was angry enough to curl his fists. Clearly, an understanding had not been reached. He didn’t know what a rapist was, but whatever she did to hurt the dungeon and whatever she did to apologize clearly didn’t cancel each other out.

After standing around being angry for another moment, Anther remembered where he was. He looked up at the faintly glowing ceiling and frowned.

“Are you okay, Mr. Dungeon?” He tilted his head, “Or Ms. Dungeon?” The boy wondered briefly if the dungeon was either of those things and shook his head. “I don’t know what happened, but Cherise needs to apologize better. Do you want me to go get her?”

Anther wasn’t sure how he expected the dungeon to respond, but a chilly wind blew by and he took that as a no. It’s really hurt. Cherise, you bully!

The boy figured that he might as well take another look at the second puzzle while he was around. Just as before, nothing really jumped out at him about it. The hole in the door was strange, but it wasn’t immediately obvious what to do with it. Anther examined the pictures again. The winged foxes on each row were similar, but the style of each row was different. He wondered if, instead of considering a group of fourteen flying foxes, he should think of them as the same five-ish flying foxes drawn over time.

With that thought, something finally started to make sense. Anther looked up and pointed at the top row, “So I want to get these foxes from scary,” he looked down and pointed to the bottom row, “to friendly.” That must have been what the hole was for; he had to do something to transition between those states. In fact, if he looked at the foxes in the middle row, they seemed expectant.

The boy thought, and paced, and thought, and leaned against the wall, and thought, and picked some black pepper, and thought a little bit more. Finally, his eyes lit up. “I’ve got it!”

With quick, excited motions, the boy stripped himself of his bow and arrows and pushed them into the hole, beaming. Now he was unarmed, so the foxes didn’t have to be afraid of him and they could be friends instead. Anther stood there, smiling and proud of himself, for half a minute, but the door showed no signs of opening.

... Uh oh.

He started to panic. If the door didn’t open, he couldn’t recover his weapons. He would get in trouble if his mother found out he’d lost them, not to mention it would be dangerous to go back through the forest unarmed.

The boy paced back and forth, fiddling with a strand of long brown hair. His hands were starting to feel sweaty, and Anther was a boy who didn’t sweat much. Soon, he gave in to his anxiety and just knocked on the second door, calling through the hole in the middle, “Excuse me? Can I come in to get my bow and arrows back? I swear I’ll leave right after! I-if that’s not okay…” He was going to add that it would be fine if they just pushed his things back up the hole, but he stalled. When he came back to himself, the doors were cracked open. He saw the wooden person from earlier, holding his things out to him. There was no way for its featureless face to make any expression, but its head was tilted to the side.

The elf broke out into a grin and took his things back. “Thank you, doll friend!”

The wooden person stared for a moment, then nodded its head, closing the door gently. Anther heard the sound of a door bar being slid back into place, as well as a cheerful yip.

Could it be there actually are winged foxes on the other side of this door?

Anther had never owned a pet, and the domesticated animals in the village were really, um, relaxed? The idea of playing with a cheerful, fluffy animal had suddenly rooted in his mind as a very tempting prospect. He was out of time for today, though. Any minute now, Anniil’s pies would be done, and his slice would be cold if he stuck around any longer. He walked toward the entrance, pausing his feet for a moment when he realized that he was probably the only person who’d snuck in here since Cherise arrived. The dungeon probably didn’t know what was going on outside, even though it concerned it the most.

At the front door, Anther turned around and looked up at the ceiling. “The Explorer’s Guild is making a building in the village. Explorers will come here after that to, um, explore you. I’m actually not supposed to be in here since I’m not an explorer yet,” he fidgeted shyly. “It looks like the building will be done in another five days or so, but some of the people who are already here might become explorers and take a look before that. I thought you would want to know about that stuff.”

The boy stood around and kicked absently at a tuft of grass, and a warm breeze touched his skin. He smiled, glad that he was friends with the dungeon, and left for the village.

***Archimedes’ POV***

When one had nothing to do but accumulate mana for several days, it got a little boring. Archimedes mimicked something like sleep as he tried to pass the time more quickly, only waking to harvest "mana potions". His sleep was interrupted when someone stepped into his range of perception. For a brief moment, Archimedes sunk into a cold panic, but the visitor was the elf boy, First. He breathed a sigh of relief, then sulked. He was upset with himself for being so angry at that demon when she wasn’t around, then immediately turning into a frightened child when he thought she had returned.

How, how pathetic.

He belatedly remembered that Minute was making improvements to his first puzzle. It was redesigning the door bar so it could slide all the way into the wall, instead of sliding half of the way and having to rotate with the remaining door. It was pretty obvious when Archimedes thought about it.

But right now, that was a problem. Someone was coming when his front door was unlocked! Whatever would he do?

Absolutely nothing because this kid is the only person so far who actually knows the solution to the first puzzle. Locked or unlocked, he could come in if he wanted to.

“Someone’s coming,” Archimedes warned his Clockwork Golem.

“Do I attack this person?” Minute asked back.

“Not unless he hurts you first. I don’t think he will, though; I’ve seen this one before.”

Archimedes made a game out of it: trying to guess what strange thing the boy would do next. First noticed the door was open, peeked inside, and politely excused himself when he noticed it was being worked on. Archimedes chuckled that he’d gotten it right.

However, only a few seconds later, the boy poked his head in again, asking if he could sneak in and take something even though he didn’t have to solve the first puzzle. Archimedes tried to sigh, but a chuckle slipped out instead.

“Do you have to surprise me every time you come here? Let him in, Minute.”

The boy did as he said he would. He was so quick about it that you’d think he was due to extinguish a fire after this.

Archimedes sighed after the boy left and put himself back into a sleep-like state, but it wasn’t even an hour later before First was back again. This time, he noticed the new artworks Archimedes had created in honor of a certain someone. He felt a little guilty showing graphic images like these to someone so pure-hearted, but First seemed to recognize the feeling that went into the carvings, rather than the carvings themselves. Archimedes could feel genuine anger from the lighthearted child, and it made him feel warm for some reason.

“Are you okay, Mr. Dungeon?” First tilted his head, “Or Ms. Dungeon?”

No, it was neither of those. He usually used male pronouns for himself since his name was associated with males back on Rachon, but technically, he was just like Minute: genderless and asexual.

“I don’t know what happened, but Cherise needs to apologize better. Do you want me to go get her?”

The thought of that person coming back was unpleasant, to say the least. Archimedes shivered in worry and tried to convey that feeling to First. The boy said nothing, but it seemed like he’d gotten the message.

The elf switched his focus to the next puzzle. Again, Archimedes was amazed how this obvious puzzle wasn’t immediately tossed aside. To elf children, at least, this was a considerably challenging riddle. The boy did seem to understand the nature of the puzzle, though. He just didn’t get how to see it through. When the child actually disarmed himself and dropped his weapons into the hole, Archimedes frankly couldn’t believe it.

“This child… Haaahhh.”

Luckily, Minute was just a few doors down. Archimedes promptly ordered him to make his way to the first room. He didn’t want to give away hints to solving the puzzle by showing what was just past it. The idea of giving food to the Wolfbats might occur to a kid like First even if he disregarded the rest of the puzzle.

First insisted on surprising him one more time before leaving, though. The child innocently told him about what was going on in his village and when Archimedes could expect challengers to start coming. It was information that was worth a great deal to him. He’d spent five days unable to do anything but accumulate mana, knowing that he had roughly five more before things got serious was rather reassuring.

About six hours after the boy left, Archimedes woke up to kill off one final batch of critters and finally had all the mana he needed to ban magic on the second floor. Just like a Biome, the effects of this change would grow to cover the whole floor as it expanded.

It took another hour for him to successfully execute the change to his dungeon, and he felt somewhat hot and feverish the whole time. Fifty thousand mana was very close to the upper limit of what he could control. As a reference, his second floor had only cost about twenty thousand mana. Granted, the main difficulty there was in the execution, rather than the cost.

His second floor felt quite odd once magic was no longer allowed on it. Creatures with mana in them would be safe inside, but if they released that mana outward, it would immediately be transformed into ether and leave their control. It was harder for Archimedes to sense things in a place with no ambient mana. Looking at things through ether was… blurrier; there was a slight delay to everything.

The second floor was now an anomaly. Ether was used to repair things that broke, and the speed at which his Fertile Cave Biome produced ether actually increased. If it wasn’t so annoying, he might consider making more floors like this.

At about the same time he finished banning magic, something finally matured to adulthood. Really, taking five whole days. Plant type monsters, ironically, did not grow like weeds. With nothing to do but accumulate mana once again, Archimedes went to check on the Mandrake he’d planted at the edge of his second floor’s first hallway.

Archimedes watched as two cute green leaves on a stem trembled and something poked its way out of the dirt. He blinked and looked again. He rubbed his eyes just to be sure.

That’s a Mandrake?

The Fertile Cave Biome had done wonders for it of a much different kind than the Nymph experienced. Mandrakes, which were typically shriveled, human-shaped roots that grew medicinal leaves from their heads, were ugly and grey, and they screamed loud enough to burst eardrums when picked from the earth.

Archimedes had now cataloged that form of Mandrake in his mind as a fetal Mandrake. The one he saw now was a fully-grown adult.

It climbed willingly out of the dirt. Though the medicinal leaves growing from a sprout on top of its head hadn’t grown at all, the root part was as big as an adult human. Its body was no longer shriveled and twisted, but smooth and proportionate. Its skin had changed from an ashen grey to a fair white, with a hint of green. It had a slender figure, an innocent, pretty-boy face, and it even had soft brown hair growing from its head.

This thing. This is just a human growing a leaf from its head, isn’t it?

The fully matured Mandrake even had a clear gender: he was male.

The Mandrake closed his warm brown eyes and raised his arms over his head, stretching and letting out a small squeak.

“What a nice atmosphere,” he muttered in a sweet, earthy voice.

An E Rank monster can speak aloud just after being born?

Upon taking a closer look, the Mandrake’s Rank was actually C; it had apparently evolved into an Adult Mandrake as it grew over the past five days. Maybe Archimedes should have expected it since they started off as F rank Mandrake Seeds and grew into E rank Mandrakes. This was the first time he’d seen one grow past that fetal state, though.

And it’s still unusual for a C rank to talk.

The Adult Mandrake started searching for something with its eyes. “Um, I can feel you there,” it said unsurely. “You’re the one who grew me, right?”

“That’s right.”

The monster sunk into thought. “This is a dungeon, isn’t it? So I’m a dungeon monster?” He trailed off and then nodded to himself. “Um, thank you for creating me and growing me and all that. I’m really grateful.”

“Well, I didn’t expect you to turn out this good when I planted you.”

The Mandrake smiled awkwardly. “That’s a little mean to say, isn’t it? Or was that supposed to be a compliment? Well, um, what do I call you?”

“My name is Archimedes,” he thought briefly, before continuing, “and your name is Alphio.”

It was just a shortened version of the name of the Alphen Helio leaves growing from his head. He hoped the Mandrake didn’t mind. Incidentally, there were many different herbs that could grow from a Mandrake’s head, but once one grew, it couldn’t be changed later. Archimedes had planted one that grew Alphen Helio leaves, thinking that he could use them as a reward even if the monster itself turned out useless. Alphen Helio was, in layman’s terms, a beautification medicine that greatly improved skin quality.

Now that Alphio was a named monster, harvesting him for materials would be… Well, he would occasionally shed and grow new leaves, so there was no need to do anything drastic.

“Alphio?” the Mandrake twirled a lock of soft brown hair around his finger, smiling cutely and blushing a faint pink. “I like it. I think I’ll go by Alfy for short. Thank you, Archy.”

“A-Archy…”

Alphio apparently didn’t hear him, lost in his own thoughts. “S-so, um, do I have to, you know, fight people?” He repeatedly pressed his index fingers together, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m very strong.”

Archimedes nodded internally. This creature was no stronger than an average human. Monsters instinctively knew their own abilities, though, so there was an easy way to figure out what to do with him.

“Is there anything you’re good at? Anything that could help me?”

Alphio’s eyes lit up and he smiled. “I can make loooots of ether! I, um, I just need a little sunlight.”

Archimedes nodded once again. He had recovered some mana since earlier, and he had plenty to make a little artificial sunlight. He decided to put it in the first room, so the light wouldn’t interfere with the hint to his first floor puzzle. Archimedes guided the Mandrake over the safe tiles and the monster dove into the sun, basking and stretching and making comfortable sounds. While not much had changed visibly, Archimedes felt his mana accumulation suddenly increase from 210 to 350.

He looked at the happily basking Alphio, blinked, and calmly planted another Mandrake Seed.